Josie’s Nutcracker was only one act, so before I knew it, Marie and the Nutcracker Prince were in the Land of Sweets. My mind wandered during the Spanish Hot Chocolate number, but it jolted to attention when the Chinese Tea music began. My body twitched, ready to launch into the entrechats and tiny, shuffling steps I knew so well. But what I was seeing onstage was totally different.

Three girls ran to the center, carrying in each hand a shiny green flower on a long stem. In unison, they flung their arms out, and the flowers morphed into thick, streaming ribbons. The dancers did swift turns, acrobatic jumps, and backbends, all while whipping their arms out in rhythmic movements, the ribbons making startling shapes in the air. It was mesmerizing. The ribbons seemed alive.

When the dance ended, thunderous applause echoed through the auditorium, and a strange feeling stirred in my stomach. It wasn’t the jealousy bomb.

It was shame. Anger.

I was breathing so hard as the applause ended that I was afraid people would hear me. I ducked out of my seat and walked quickly up the aisle. In the lobby, I sat on the floor and flipped through the program until I came to a page labeled A Note on the National Dances, written by the head teacher, Yuna Lee.

My students and I have talked for years about the stereotypes in The Nutcracker’s national dances. I was beyond proud when a few of them approached me, saying they wanted to make these dances more accurate, sensitive, and complex representations of dance forms around the world. I think advanced student Josie Keeler put it best when she said, “For hundreds of years, The Nutcracker has perpetuated narrow, racist views of different cultures. That’s not how I want kids to see the world.” Together, Variations students and teachers researched scores of stunning performances. With Angela Xie of the Philadelphia Chinese Dance Center, we learned a ribbon dance for the Chinese Tea variation…

I stopped reading and leaned my head against the wall.

I would always love ballet more than modern dance. Classical music more than noise music. I knew that with the same certainty I always had. But the Chinese Tea dance I’d just seen was so much better than the one I’d danced for years at my ballet school. And now, having seen what that dance could have been, all the possibilities Kira had never even considered, I had never considered…

I rubbed my face with my hands. Why hadn’t I realized that the dance could be different? Why hadn’t Kira? But it wasn’t just me, and it wasn’t just Kira. I thought about the multitude of Nutcrackers I’d seen onstage and on YouTube over the years. Lots of ballet companies—big and small, local and international—had similar Chinese Tea dances. Why hadn’t any of us changed it?